Back from vacation…

I apologize for the secrecy surrounding the previous post. As it so happened, CCShadow and I went to Los Angeles to cover the Midway Pulse 2006 media event there, and Midway preferred things to be kept quiet until today. I arrived there at 11 AM PST yesterday, got a cab to the hotel, and waited there for a while for CCS to arrive. I wasn’t bored, though; I had to take some support calls for work while I was there, seeing as every single IT person in the company was out for one reason or another. After CCS arrived, we went and had lunch at a place across the street from the hotel called Pizza Rustica. He had a standard margherita pizza, while I tried a shrimp pesto pizza that was pretty tasty. From there, we relaxed at the hotel for a bit, at which point I switched my desktop wallpaper on my Powerbook. From there, we headed to House of Blues for the event.

We came across Ed Boon while in line, but he had left something back at the hotel and needed to go get it. However, we got to spend some time talking to John Podlasek (producer of Mortal Kombat: Deception and Mortal Kombat: Armageddon) while in line. From there, we signed in, took our spots… and then got surprised when the bar in front of us split apart to reveal a stage and chairs downstairs. We went downstairs and got set up… and the presentations began.

It’s too bad they asked us to switch off our cameras for the first presentation, because even in its unpolished state, the game they demonstrated was beautiful. Said game was Unreal Tournament 2007. After the demonstration of the game, we got to see other stuff, like X-Box Live Arcade announcements (including Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3), PSP games, and even the Lord of the Rings MMORPG. However, what we came to see was right about at the very end, and that was the presentation for Mortal Kombat: Armageddon. It started out with a video showing the effect MK has had on popular culture that was absolutely hilarious at times. After that was the teaser trailer. Then, they showed a several minute long video detailing the changes and additions made to this new chapter of MK. All I can say is… I’m really looking forward to it.

After that, they served food and drinks, and had playable games. Truthfully, the only game they had out playable that I was interested in was Rise & Fall: Civilizations at War. It’s an RTS that takes place in classical times; the fun part is that you can take control of your army’s leader and play him a la an third-person adventure game. They were also giving out free copies of Matthew Reilly’s 7 Deadly Wonders at the Rise & Fall area; I picked up a hardcover copy, and will probably read it at some point. Otherwise, I spent most of the evening chatting with Joe, and also talking to Ed, John, and Tony Goskie. It’s always fun chatting with those folks. We also ate, and took the time to get an interview with Ed. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any prepared questions and the noise level was pretty high. So, being able to hear much from Ed was a challenge in and of itself. I don’t know if I could say I did well, myself. All in all, though, the night was a blast.

… though, it was funny; at one point right after the presentations ended, Ed passed by me and saw me uploading files from my laptop to MK Online. He also happened to notice my wallpaper was the MK: Armageddon logo, and I cheerfully admitted that it seemed appropriate. He just laughed, shook his head, and walked away.

We left the event an hour early, as Joe had a 7 AM flight out. We went back to the hotel, where I spent time ripping the video I had taken from the event, watermarking them, converting them to Quicktime files, and then uploading them to MK Online. When I got up this morning, I pre-wrote the news stories for the site, and eventually went to the airport where I had lunch and attempted (semi-successfully) to transcribe. Unfortunately, the laptop battery gave out when I was two-thirds of the way done. When I got home, I got the stories posted except for the interview; that’ll be done tomorrow.

And now, I’m going to go to bed, as I have to drive out to Buffalo, TX tomorrow to get a new location onto our network. Fun fun…